May 23, 2025
New Blog
In 1968 before starting my junior year at the University of Louisville School of Music, I auditioned for and became a member of the Louisville Orchestra. Myambition had been to be a professional symphony orchestra musician like my first viola teacher—Irv Segall—a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Never imagining in my wildest dreams that I might be hired by a professional orchestra before I received my bachelor’s degree, I was “over the moon” with excitement. The previous season the Louisville Orchestra had appointed a new music director, Mexican-born conductor Jorge Mester. He was young—just 33 years old—dynamic, and possessed a very precise baton or “stick” technique as we say in the biz. During my senior year, George—as Jorge preferred to be called—would become my first conducting teacher.
When I returned my playing contract to the personnel manager,I had no idea that one of the “deities of classical music” would be guest conducting during my first season as a violist with the Louisville Orchestra. Aaron Copland, seen here in a 1968 photo—somewhat deceptively benignly smiling—came to Louisville to lead a concert that included his Suite from Appalachian Spring. This thought was enough to make any undergraduate music major’s head spin around—mine certainly did. I couldn’t believe that I would be having the opportunity to perform in an orchestra be under such a world-renowned and admired musical figure!
Fast forward to 2025. Last weekend, The Discovery Orchestra presented a Discover Symphonic Masterworks multi-media, interactive program on … the Suite from Appalachian Spring. A favorite work of mine since first encountering it in high school, it was a joy to engage our audience in discovering a few of its musical aspects. Joining me were Virginia Johnston, our former Executive Director and current Finance Director—and clarinetist par excellence—and superb violinist Dr. Sharon Gayoung Cho, a faculty member at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Both were on hand to demonstrate some of the clarinet and violin solos from Copland’s score. As I prepared for the evening, I was remembering the thrill of playing the Suite from Appalachian Spring under Copland nearly sixty years ago. It wasn’t actually all fun. During our rehearsal with him, Maestro Copland was quite displeased with the way we were playing one of the technically challenging, rhythmically syncopated passages of the work. Clearly annoyed—he showed it. But that aspect of the rehearsal aside, I found myself having some sort of out-of-body experience just from being in the presence of AARON COPLAND! It wouldn’t be the only OBE I had during my professional playing career, but it was the first.
The Suite from Appalachian Spring has a number of aesthetically exquisite moments as well as some very stirring ones. There are parts of that score that elicit my Maull family sense of patriotism. My father Frederick was very proud of his maritime family roots. My fourth great grandfather John Maull—seeking a new life—sailed in the early 1700’s on a tall ship from London to the town of Lewes in the Colony of Delaware. His son John, my third great grandfather, was a naval spy for the Continental Army during the American Revolution.
Don’t get me wrong—I can be emotionally moved by well-performed renditions of The Star-Spangled Banner and America, the Beautiful, but nothing gives me those “pride in our country goosebumps” like Copland’s full 90-piece orchestra setting of the Shaker hymn Simple Gifts, which occurs near the conclusion of his Suite from Appalachian Spring.
If you’ve never listened to this work, or not listened to it in a while—please watch and listen to this YouTube performance by the Nord Deutsche Rundfunk Elbphilharmonie Orchester under American conductor Alan Gilbert—who was music director of the New York Philharmonic from 2009 to 2017. The playing by the North German Radio Elbphilharmonic Orchestra is very fine—I’m certain Maestro Copland would be pleased (!)—but, of equal importance, the camera work directs our attention musically to where it needs to go. Enjoy all of the beauty and American idealism expressed in Aaron Copland’s Suite from Appalachian Spring. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DlVh9RFfws?t=0s
